california | Robert Forto

Right around Iditarod time up here in Alaska I approached a small community radio station and asked them if they would be interested in airing a show about our state sport, Mushing, and in particular, the Iditarod.

The station manager asked me to submit a show proposal and he would take a listen. To my surprise, a couple days later he called back and we stared to formulate a plan for the show!

Mushing Radio started on Wednesday February 29th with Mushing Magazine publisher, Greg Sellentin, as our first guest. We spoke about “the state of mushing in Alaska”. While we didnt quite know what we were doing being in the big time studio, far removed from our usual Internet podcasts we didnt even record that show!

The following Saturday we started our daily Iditarod coverage for the 2012 race. I was downtown in the thick of things and my wife and sometimes co-host Michele was manning the mic in the studio with our good friend Alex Stein calling in from sunny southern California.

We aired a show each night during the Iditarod and even a live show as Dallas Seavey crossed the finish line to win the race.

Over the coming months we spoke to all the big names in the Iditarod world with names like, Jonrowe, Buser, Seavey (twice), Zirkle and Mackey.

We have spoken to many up-and-coming-msuhers and even a few juniors with big dreams.

We hope to continue on the trail with Mushing Radio heading into our second season. Hold on, it will be a blast!

Listen to Mushing Radio now

With the first of the debris of the tsunami arriving on our shores here in Alaska and all along the west coast, we are reminded of the impact of trash and our environment. I am no tree-hugging greenpeace fanatic by any stretch of the imagination but I do know what we waste is not always forgotten.

Take the great Pacfic garbage patch for example. It is just an example that many of us either don’t care or we are uneducated on the effects that we as mere humans and doing to our Mother Earth.

Check out these facts:

Discovered in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore [Observer 8 Aug 10]
2008: 45 kilos of trash per kilo of plankton [Observer 8 Aug 10]
The floating dump covers an area one and a half time the size of the USA [Observer 8 Aug 10]
Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world’s oceans [L.A. Times 2 Aug 06]
Every square kilometre of ocean hosts roughly 120,000 pieces of floating plastic [UN]
The world produced 300 billion pounds of plastic each year, about 10% ends up in the ocean, 70% of which eventually sinks [GreenPeace]
It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement. [Greenpeace]
80 percent of ocean trash originates on land [L.A. Times 2 Aug 06]
The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California (two times bigger than Texas)
The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii
Plastic does not biodegrade, no natural process can break it down